"And All Between" is the self-contained successor to [Zilpha Snyder's] earlier "Below the Root." (It is so self-contained, in fact, that the first 125 pages are devoted to a recapitulation of previous action from a different point of view.) Once the story proper gets under way, we find that it winds up the tale of the schism between the tree-dwelling Kindar and the subterranean Erdlings, the latter exiled and depicted as monsters because they know or suspect a forbidden truth.

This truth is simply that of the possibility of violence, whether verbal, emotional or actual, as a human character trait….

If you accept Green-sky on its own terms, the tale is lively and the world it depicts is complex and consistent. The deep sense of malaise that assails this reader arises from something that underlies the book's ostensible concern with truth in government: Criticism is...